HYDERABAD: Labour department may have reduced the number of inspections it holds to enforce child labour laws, but the tighter focus on few establishments sure did not translate into convictions. In 2018, of the 244 inspections, violations were found only in 121 cases of which prosecution was initiated in just 71 cases. The conviction rate in these 121 cases is at a dismal 22 cases, roughly 27 per cent.
Highly placed sources from the department say that this is happening even now, as the inspectors maybe going by an outdated definition of child labour.
“The convictions seen are only on cases where children work in what is categorised as hazardous occupations. These convictions are done under the Section 14 of the Child Labour Act of 1986,” noted a senior official. This rules out any children who work in non-hazardous occupations from seeing convictions in their case.
However, this goes against the fact that an amendment had been made in Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) rules in 2017, where it was stated that any case where children under the age of 14 are found working bet it hazardous or non-hazardous is child labour.
This fetches the stringent rules laid under Child Labour act, which has higher penalties and stringent laws.
“When we find children in non-hazardous occupation, we rescue them. The cases are then prosecuted under the Shops and Establishment Act. Here in strict terms it is not a child labour case and we can’t really take up convictions. So we rescue the child, and levy a sum of `100, unlike the ` 20,000 that Child labour act fetched,” noted an official.
So while this way the children are rescued, there is very little deterrence on the organisation from employing a child again as they face no prosecution per say and get away by paying a paltry sum of `100.
Experts note that this will not set a deterrence for the establishments. “The officials seem to have perfected the art of merely holding rescues but not ensuring that there are convictions,” noted Isidore Phillips of NGO Divya Disha.
Meanwhile, Dr Gangadhar E, Joint Labour Commissioner says, the use of this law has been in the nascent stages as the number of children employed over the age of 14 has come down.